Vito Bratta – Eddie Trunk Interview – 17 February 2007

VITO BRATTA – so the record company’s saying we need another Pride. I say, Ok, so what exactly does that mean? The label goes we need the hit singles… I go listen the songs we gave you, on “Pride” weren’t hit singles written purposely to be to be hit singles. They were just songs that became hit singles and they were just songs we wrote. Now you’ve got somebody telling you now you have to purposely write a hit single. Now how do you do that? How do you purposely write a hit single, I mean there are people out there that do that…

Vito was a songwriter who created songs that he wanted to create. That is why the music sounded magical. I always hated it, when a band’s creativity was stifled or chained just so that the labels can chase dollars, and by doing that the labels end up losing because the band becomes lost. If a band becomes lost, the audience will know. In the seventies, the bands did what they wanted. The labels were scared to say anything to the artists. Then the artists got rich, joined with Wall Street bankers and everything changed.

VITO BRATTA – “Big Game” was a setback for the Label. It didn’t sell as many. We were doing a headlining tour of Europe by ourselves for the Big Game album and they (the Label) said wouldn’t it be great if we played at Wembley with Motley Crue and Skid Row?

Skid Row went on and they were just killing the place. And Motley Crue had a great show and here we are sandwiched in between.

We realized, that night, on stage at Wembley that these songs from the Big Game album aren’t translating well in the live show because when you’ve got tens of thousands of angry British rockers out in the audience and if you don’t have a certain type of music; it just wasn’t working. So we all looked at each other on stage and said we need to throw in some of our better stuff in here. I was like what better stuff. We need to write more for who we are because these songs are not translating.

Then we went back to the States and we told the record label, no more tours on this album. We are going to do the album that we want to do. And they said well considering how the last album went, they said “go ahead”. They gave us unlimited funds. Mane Attraction was a half a million dollar record. They just said go and do everything that you want. Now the problem was that by the time it came out, that whole scene was over with.

A half a million dollar record, and once it came out, it was over in 4 months. These days you can record an album for 10,000. Then again why would you. Just record your best songs and release more frequently. White Lion where missing for 18 months from the music business. It was the worst decision ever made.